Albino Sparrow?

[The Grebe]

Have any of you viewers ever seen an albino common Sparrow? Does that even happen with birds?

We seen a little Sparrow sitting on the split rail, about 10 feet from the patio sliding door and it was the color of light oak?

It was a sparrow alright, there were about 4-5 of his brothers and sisters sitting on the same rail and he looked the same in every respect except he was real light in color?

[Steve Foss]

Hey Grebe:

Albinism can happen with any bird species. By common sparrow I figure you mean English, or house, sparrow. I've seen several over the years with some white feathers where they don't "belong," but never a complete and true albino sparrow. Same with robins.

[Tom Wilson]

If I remember correctly there was an three or four page article about this very subject in Birds and Blooms within the last year. STF is right on--Albinism (the lack of melanin) can happen in any and all species of birds and mammals. I believe insects are the only things on earth that are not affected by albinism.

Tom W

[The Grebe]

Tom...This is just a little food for thought...I used to work in a vegetable oil processing division of Reichhold Chemicals, formerally Spencer kellogg.

We were situated over by the U of M, along the tracks and I'm sure the buildings that housed the operations were way more then 100 years old.

We had problems with cockroaches, not them little suckers like the ones that run around in houses, these were the super sized industrial kind, as big as a grown mans thumb!

There were certain damper areas, around the shaley limestone foundation where the roaches would sometimes mass by the 1000's and every once in awhile you would see a totally ivory colored roach. The same in every respect as the other roaches, except ivory in color, instead of the reddish brown.....maybe they were albinos? I sure don't know what else would explain the color?